Silver Ryukyu Kingdom (Okinawan, Japan) 100 mon value Ryuukyuu Tsuuhou 1863 AD
Ryukyu Kingdom (now Okinawan in Japan)
Silver coin, 100 mon value Ryuukyuu Tsuuhou
1863 AD, Ryuukyuus and in Satsuma domain


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Weight: 23.5 grams; Size: 48 mm; Material: Solid Silver
 
Obv: Ryuukyuu Tsuuhou ( Liu Qiu Tong bao ) Currency of Ryukyu
Rev:    value 100 Cash
 
The 100 mon Ryuukyuu Tsuuhou was first manufactured in Kagoshima (Satsuma domain) 1863 for circulation within the Ryuukyuus and in Satsuma domain itself. Like the Tenpou Tsuuhou upon which it was modeled, its face value was 100 mon but its weight was merely 6 to 7 times that of a 1 mon coin. Furthermore, even though the face value was 100 mon the Satsuma government ordered that it circulate at the value of 124 mon (go figure!). This made it a profitable coin to manufacture, but was not well received in circulation.

The round Hanshuu Ryuukyuu Tsuuhou was ordered to circulate at the value of 248 mon, or twice the value of the 100 mon coin. However it weighed merely 8 monme or about 10 to 12 times the weight of the average one mon coin. Han means "half" and "shu" is a gold currency weight. Therefore the Satsuma government was trying to command an exchange rate between copper currency and gold currency. Normally the relative exchange rates of silver, gold and copper currencies were unstable throughout Japan despite government attempts to decree them into one currency system. Thus although at one half shu this coin should have circulated at 32 coins per gold ryou (one koban coin), it is unlikely that it really did so.

source: Nihon Ginkou Chousakyoku ed., Zuroku Nihon no kahei, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Touyou Keizai Shinpousha, 1973), pp. 319-322
 
The Ryuukyuus    Kingdom
The Ryuukyuus    Kingdom (琉球國) are today known as Okinawa Prefecture. They are are string of islands stretching in an arc from Japan's Kyuushuu Island down toward Taiwan. Previous smaller kingdoms were unified into an independent kingdom by the Sho family in the early 1400's. The first locally made coin was the Taise Tsuuhou begun in 1454. The next was the Setaka Tsuuhou, first minted in 1461. Despite the fact that the Ryuukyuu's were not a large kingdom, the number of these coins minted was quite large and they are not too uncommon. One other coin, the Kin'en Sehou (1470) is more hard to find. After this, local mintings of standard 1 mon coins seem to have stopped and Chinese coinage relied upon. 
In 1609 the Shimazu clan, rulers of the Kyuushuu domainal country of Satsuma, sent an army to conquer the Ryuukyus and took the king Sho Nei as hostage. The Tokugawa overlords away in Edo allowed the Shimazu clan to claim the Ryuukyuu's for their own as a subject kingdom. The Sho were returned and remained kings of the still relatively independent Ryuukyuus but were subject to taxation and indirect rule by the Shimazu house until the 1870's. At the same time the Ryuukyuus were treated as an independent periphery kingdom by the Ming, and later the Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty of China. Thus the Ryuukyuus had a very complex political identity between 1609 and 1879 when they were fully incorporated into the Japanese Meiji state, as Okinawa Prefecture. 
During the late Tokugawa and early Meiji period Satsuma domain, like many domains within Japan, wished to mint its own currency, and also to manufacture counterfeit 100 mon Tenpou Tsuuhou coins, in order to improve government finances. It achieved this partly by the cover of manufacturing coins for use within the Ryuukyuu kingdom. The 100 mon Ryuukyuu Tsuuhou (1863-) is very similar to the Tenpou Tsuuhou. The Hanshu Ryuukyuu Tsuuyou (1863-) is large, round and not like any Japanese coin.
 
 
Seal from Qing China giving authority to the King of Ryukyu to rule.
 
 
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